The new share structure will see two new shares, which come without voting rights, given to investors for every current share they hold.

By selling off his own non-voting shares over the coming years, while retaining the shares that do carry voting power, Mr Zuckerberg will be able to reduce his stake in Facebook without losing the 60pc of voting power that the current share structure gives him.

“I’ll be able to keep founder control of Facebook so we can continue to build for the long term, and [my wife] Priscilla and I will be able to give our money to fund important work sooner,” he said.

“We have always been a founder-led company. This structure has helped us resist the short term pressures that often hurt companies.”

“This is not a traditional governance model, but Facebook was not built to be a traditional company. The board believes that a founder-led approach has been and continues to be in the best interests of Facebook, its stockholders, and the community,” Facebook’s General Counsel Colin Stretch said.

The announcement came as Facebook said profits in the first quarter of the year had trebled to $1.5bn as it signs up more users and gains an increasingly large portion of online advertising.